If you're going to be a big business tycoon slash mayor of a city, you're going to have to look beyond just your town. I'm talking expansion, folks, and in CityVille you'll need to do just that (in more ways than one) if you want to be successful. First things first, you'll need to do some intercity commerce before you'll be able to expand. Especially considering the first city limits expansion costs 20 thousand coins.

Welcome to the wide world of exports and imports, which you'll find out about in detail behind the break.

Shipping can be done two ways: by train or by, well, ship. You'll only have access to shipping via train until a later mission comes along that involves building a pier and whatnot. Luckily, the train station is raring to go as soon as you arrive. However, we don't recommend you jump into shipping until you're well into the swing of things (i.e. read our Franchise guide).

Once you have a good amount of goods and cash, each of which come from farming and collecting from properties, you can start shipping goods and buying them from Samantha through the Train Schedule Menu. It's here that you can select to buy or sell goods and to how many people with varying prices, gains and times. Selling goods detracts from your supply, but nets you cash while importing goods does the reverse. Sending an receiving anything from Samantha's city goes something like this:

Notice the timer. This is how long it takes for your train to make the trip. Once it returns, you can collect your Goods or cash. Now, sending goods to multiple friends' cities goes a little differently, so here are the current rates and times:

You'll notice that when you select to buy or sell goods to a multiple amount of neighbors, that you can choose which of your friends to include in the exchange. It'd be wise to choose friends who you do business with normally considering they get a coin bonus for your trains that pass through. Also, doing this will help remind your friends to continue doing business with you. The returns aren't exactly amazing currently, which is most likely due to the fact that Goods are relatively easy to come by through farming right now. But imagine that later on the game, as in when overseas shipment is open to everyone, that this will become extremely important in fueling your eventual list of franchises.

Eventually, there will be an interesting balance to be maintained once everyone reaches higher levels of commerce. It seems that the pier and ships will be an automated process, simply collecting goods on various timers. But before you can build a pier and start shipping good internationally, so to speak, you'll need to become the mayor. (We'll have more on both once these options become available.)

Now that you've built up the savvy to support your imminent explosion onto to commerce scene, let's talk literally. Just like in other Zynga games, the option to expand your land is there from the beginning in the Build menu. However, the first land grab, at 12x12, costs a whopping 20 thousand coins. You'll also need a Zoning Permit, which your friends can gift you for free from the Gifting Menu.

Expansion behaves a bit differently than in Zynga's other games. Instead of just growing larger on all sides, you'll be granted a 12x12 spot of land that you can choose to place along any one of your city's four edges. This opens things up for a little strategy. For instance, if you're near a local river or the coastline, I would highly recommend expanding in that direction first to get a pier going as early as possible. Until that time comes, just keep on farming, shipping those goods and growing your franchise empire.